6/23/13

Homily for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Scripturesfor today's Mass)

Audio for homily

You’d think that if you’d ever been branded,you’d
remember it and you’d have a scar on your body,the
mark of the brand.

But not always so.

In a real, sacramental way,each of us is “branded” when we
are baptized.The priest or the deacon says to the one about to be baptized:In
the name of the Church I claim you for Christ our Saviorby
the sign of his cross which I trace on your foreheadand
invite your parents and godparents to do the same.This branding is painless and
invisible:the
branding iron is the gentle touch of flesh upon flesh,but the sacrament brands our souls
as belonging to Christ,claimed
for Christ by the Church.

Imagine for a momentthat the
Cross traced on our foreheads at baptism did
leave a mark.

You know what it’s like to walk
through Ash Wednesdaywith
a smudged cross on your forehead.Imagine walking through life,your
forehead visibly branded by the Cross of Jesus,and everyone knowing, all the
time, that you’d been claimed by,that
you belong to Christ.

Of course there’s another sign of
being claimedthat many of us wear and
that’s a wedding ring.

A band of precious metal that sets
apartand marks the one who wears it as
taken,claimed by another with a promise of faithful love–
until death.

Even in an age and culture in which
divorce is so prevalent,we
all know what a wedding band is intended to mean,what
it’s meant to signal to those who wear it and to all who see it.

A wedding ring is easily noticedbut
not so that baptismal Cross invisibly traced on our foreheadsbut
indelibly imprinted on our souls:the
Cross of Jesus by which we’ve been claimed and savedand
by which we’re called to live our lives.

Or as Jesus himself put it in the
gospel today:the
Cross which each of us is charged to take up, every day and carry.

What does that mean? What cross are we expectedto
take up and carry every day to follow Jesus?

We all have crosses to carry:personal
and family struggles; physical and emotional pain;loss
and grief; discouragement,
disappointmentand
difficulties of all kinds.

But everybody carries those
crosses, not just Christians.The Cross Jesus asks us to take up
is not only a burden,it’s
also a dying, dying to one’s self so that others might live.Which is what Jesus did for us.

Let’s take another look at wedding
rings.

In a Christian marriage both spouses carrytheir own individual burdens every day.And as a couple, they carry some,even many of those burdens, together.But as lovers, each makes the
effort to carry the other’s burdensto
lighten the load the beloved bears.That’s what Christ did for us and
what he asks us to do for one another.

To carry the burdens that belong
to others, and to do that out of love.

Christians are thosewho not only
bear their own life’s burdens every daybut
who also give of themselves and reach out, and take upand
carry the crosses others bear as well as their own.

As a husband or wife finds joyin
lessening the burden the spouse carries,so
are Christians to find life in helping to carry others’ burdenseven
while weighted down with their own;as Christ did for us in bearing on
his shouldersthe
cross that was truly ours,he bore the weight of our failure
to love one another,our
failure to carry one another’s burdens, one another’s cross.

Such is the Lord’s word to us
today:if
we want to save our lives, we need to lose them in serving others;we will find our peace, find our
joy in losing ourselvesin
carrying one another’s burdens.

Who’s waiting in your life, and in
mine,who’s waiting for you and me to
help carrythe burdens, the crosses they
bear?

We began our prayer todayby
tracing on our bodies the sign of the Cross,by
which we were claimed for Christ in baptism.We will end our prayer today by
branding ourselvesagain
with the same Cross.

But before we do that, while
gathered in the shadow of the Cross,we
will share in the life Christ promised to thosewho
carry their share of the Cross every dayand
share in carrying others’ burdens, too.

We’ll be nourished here by the
sacrifice of Christ’s love,in
the sacrament of this altar, this table where he invites usto
lay down our burdens for a whileand
be refreshed by the life he laid down for us on his Cross.

Are you thinking about becoming a Catholic?

The best place to start is always one of your local Catholic churches. Drop in some Sunday and see what's going on. Then you might speak to the pastor or someone on the parish staff about how they can help you and respond to your questions.